The present invention relates to tagging objects displayed on touch screen enabled devices, such as electronic white boards, with metadata.
Electronic whiteboards, or eBoards, are interactive electronic display panels having touch screen interfaces. They are often used in educational and collaborative work environments to display slides and documents and mark them up with digital ink using touch screen inputs.
During an electronic whiteboard session, it is sometimes useful to tag objects in slides or documents being displayed with metadata that describes the objects and allows them to be more easily located, grouped and sorted in later browsing and searching sessions. These metadata tags typically take the form of descriptive text strings.
One conventional method of tagging objects displayed on an electronic whiteboard with metadata invokes an auxiliary computer. This tagging method requires connecting the auxiliary computer to the electronic whiteboard and navigating a user interface on the auxiliary computer to configure the tags and apply them to objects, which can be cumbersome and disrupt the creative flow of the electronic whiteboard session.
Another conventional method of tagging objects displayed on an electronic whiteboard with metadata requires the user to select among factory-configured tags stored on the electronic whiteboard, such as a “Priority” tag. This tagging method, while in certain respects less cumbersome than the method that relies on an auxiliary device, can still be disruptive to the flow of the electronic whiteboard session since the factory-configured tags are often not classified well enough for an electronic whiteboard user to find the best tag in a timely manner. Moreover, this tagging method has limited value since the factory-configured tags are often too generic to describe tagged objects in a way that allows them to be efficiently located, grouped and sorted in later browsing and searching sessions.